Day 15 - Monday 16th October 2006

Hi everyone. Thanks to everyone who has been reading. I hope you have enjoyed my inane comments, usually done at about 2 in the morning and when I have been at least 1/2 cut. Thanks to everyone who has left comments in the comments section at the end of each days posting. They are read and are greatly appreciated. For those who haven't been leaving us comments.... Stop being so slack!!!!!!!

Today we left the big apple behind us and headed off to the bright lights of Las Vegas.
I awoke feeling more then a little seedy and with muc sadness we left our great apartment at around 9:30am. New York is serviced by 3 major airports, 2 of which or in New York itself and the 3rd is Newark Airport which is in New Jersey. New Jersey is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, just like Brooklyn and Queens are, so it isn't far at all. Our shuttle bus took one of the tunnels under the river and within minutes we were out of NY and headed to the airport. The trip was only about 1/2 hour but after that our troubles began.
This was without a doubt the worst airport experience of the trip. We arrived to find a mega long queue to get our tickets. This wasn't too bad as you tend to expect that from airports and the line was moving steadily, though on the slow side. It took us almost an hour to get to the front where we were directed to a check in person. We carted all our gear over to where we had been told only to find there was no one there. About 5 mins past before a women came over who was very rude and made out that we were stupid because we hadn't entered all our flight information into a computer (that we hadn't seen and that there were no signs for) to get our boarding passes. GRRRRR
This took quite a while to actually get thru, nothing like the nice easy systems that Qantas and Virgin have recently introduced. After we got our boarding passes, we then had to lift all of our 6 suitcases up to get weighed. They didn't then put them on a conveyer belt like they do in Australia, where they go out the back and you don't see them again until you get to your destination. We had to take them back off the scales cause you have to cart your own bags across half the airport to drop them off at xray screeing yourself. To make things worse, we also got hit for excess baggage as the free baggage limit was 50 pounds per bag (23kg) and 2 of ours were over this, so that was another $50us. Double GRRRRRRR
From the ticketing area there was a roped off path to get to the screening area, which we followed. When we got to the screening area, it was bedlem as some people were self ticketing in and then walking straight there to get their bags processed as well as other people coming from the opposite direction who had been directed to this screening station due to another one in the airport breakind down.
We eventually got rid of our bags and then headed off to get thru security. We were directed into the disabled line as there weren't many people in that line. Getting thru security for me was always a real pain. You have to take off your shoes and jacket and everyday we flew I seemed to have a jacket on as it was cold. I also had to take off my belt. Added to this I had the laptop which is surprisingly heavy and which had to be taken out of its case, both of which I would have to hold. I was also carrying a back pack full of stuff as we had no where left in our suitcases to put it. Lastly I would also have to take out my wallet and phone, all the while holding onto my passport and boarding pass (as well as everyting else listed above) which they check for about the 70th time as your walk through the metal detector. The way they were inadvertily set up, you had to do all of this before you got to a bench where you can get those big trays to put everything in.
Here I am, trying my best to hold all of this stuff and I can't get to the bench to put it into the trays as there is a little old disabled lady in front of me who has a walker that holds her bag. She is trying to lift her bag up onto the bench without much success, so I go to help her but a security guard yells at me that I am not to touch anyone elses stuff. The 4 guards there refuse to help her, even though there isn't a thing that they can do at the moment as the line has come to a complete halt due to this poor lady not being able to get her bag up, and when she finally did, she had a lot of trouble breaking her walker down to put through the machine as well.
It was a good 5 mins before she was able to do all of this and I was able to finally put my stuff down and into containers to put through xray. I walked through the metal detector with no problems and the security guy looks at my ticket, pulls out a hi-lighter, hi-lights some random letters on there and goes, 'Oh look, you have been randomly selected to undergo the more thorough security exam.' Triple GRRRRRRRRR
I am told to not touch anything and am led over to another section while the guard carrys all of my stuff with him. He gives me a full and very complete pat down. I am then told to sit on a chair while he takes some swipes off my clothes to run through a machine to test for explosives. When that comes up clean, he tests my shoes and belt for the same thing and then allows me to take those so that I can put them back on. He then pulled everything out of my bags. Anything that had pockets in it he would search thru. Finally he was satisified and he put everything back in and gave me the all clear. Mum and Toni also were 'randomly' selected. Mum had no problems as she didn't have much with her so the whole process was quite quick. They never told Toni what they were doing, so she went to grab her bags and that made the security guards very upset. So Toni started arguing with them which didn't help matters nor did it make them give her an explanation of what they were doing. As you could imagine, she wasn't very impressed with the situation. And the poor old lady was also 'randomly' selected and she was very unhappy about this. Apparently she had already been through security once at the airport this morning, where she had been randomly selected. Then she had some sort of problem with her ticket and she had to go all the way back to the ticketing area and then through security again.
All-in-all, it was not a good experience. I'm all for airport safety and even though things were a little time consuming in other airports, it was really done as painlessly as possible. Continental Airlines at this airport seemed to go out of their way to make things as hard as possible (and thats not including the extra security we had to go through which I had no issues with other then them not telling Toni what was going on).
This whole process from getting to the airport to getting thru security took 2.5 hours, exactly what you don't need when your hung over. Once thru, Newark airport goes from being a hole that looks like they are in the middle of upgrading to one of the nicest airports I have seen. It has a beautiful view back towards Manhattan, it looks new and bright and has plenty of shops and well priced places to eat. The whole thing is managed by Westfield's, and they have big signs up all over the place saying if you see things in stores there more expensive then they would be at a local mall to give them a call and they will get the situation addressed imediatly.
As it took us so long to get thru the airport, we only had 1/2 hour to our plane boarded and we were starving. We chugged some coffee and then I got a root beer float (root beer + icecream) and a really bad chicken burger. The root beer was fantastic!
Toni and I then finally had something good happen to us, we got seats in the front row of economy. This was good as the plane had a business class section, then a wall, then economy, but from our seats in the front row, I could only just touch the wall in front of me if I stretched my legs as far as they could go. Unfortunatly Mum's day didn't get any better, she was sitting in the row behind us, and thus not only did she only have the normal amount of leg room, she also had a large person sitting next to her who thought she was entitled to 1 and 1/2 seats.
The plane ride is a fraction over 5 hours (the same time to get from LA to NY even though Vegas is further inland) and was uneventful. They served pizza as the meal which I had never seen on a plane before. The other guy in our row asked me to shut the blind so that he could watch the movie which he couldn't see due to the glare, which I did. After a couple of hours I lifted the blind to have a look out and we were over farmland. 30 mins later I did the same again and we were over snow capped mountains. 30 mins later and we were over desert. I have never flown over desert before, but to me it looked just like I would imagine the Sahara Desert to look like. Flat (well flat from 30000ft), orange, all sand and nothing else.
30 mins later I looked again and we were flying over the edge of the Grand Canyon, which even at that height looked damn impressive. I left the blind up from that point as the movie was over, and from there to Vegas it is just rock, with a little bit of yellow/white sand.
We landed and walked up the air bridge and I kid you not, from the end of the airbridge off the plane to the first poker machine would have been about 20m!!!!!
Welcome to Vegas baby!!!!!!!!
We started heading towards baggage collection and mum turned to me and said, 'Do you smell that, it smells like smoke'. We walked a bit further and lo and behold, there was a glass fish bowl looking thing which was a smokers lounge, right in the middle of the walkway. It was crammed full of people (and of course poker machines) and it was almost completly full of smoke. Where else in the world can you smoke in airports these days. Wish I had taken a photo of it.
We had to catch a light train from our terminal to the main terminal to get our bags, which was fine and our bags came out relatively quickly.
I was a little worried about catching the shuttle bus service in Vegas. Everywhere else it had been good, but you were always about an hour away from the airport so it made sense to do it that way rather then Taxi it. The airport in vegas is right next to the strip. You could see our hotel from there, it was only about 600m away (not that you could walk there due to it being an airport and having no footpaths). Everywhere I had read online said just catch a taxi but by that stage the transfers were already booked. We found where we needed to go and waited in line. It took 45 mins for the shuttle to arrive, which is very frustrating when you can see your hotel!!!!! It then took another 10 mins to get everyone and their bags on. At every other airport we never waited longer then about 10 mins and it never took more then 5 mins from the time the shuttle arrived before we were on our way. Not here. Once the bags were on, it was another 15 mins before we actually left as the driver piss farted around with things, collecting tickets, going off his nana because there were 17 people on the bus and he only 15 tickets (5 mins later he figured out it was his f#@kup.) When we finally left the whole bus cheered and applauded. If you ever go to vegas trust me, catch a taxi!!!!
The 3 of us all felt really sick as we had spent the last hour and a bit on a walkway with no ventialtion that was full of petrol fumes. We were tired, cranky and 2 of us had been recovering from hangovers (I was feeling fine when I got off the plane). To add to our problems, due to taking so long to leave the airport, it was now 5:15 and peak our traffic. It took us 25 mins to get from the airport to our hotel, which was the first drop off point.
Getting our rooms was mostly painless and we had 2 rooms on the 24th floor. Our room had a nice view of the southern end of the strip, looking out at Excalibar and New York New York casinos, but it didn't have a fridge!!!!!!!!! Mum's room had a great view of the airport which coupled with no fridge and her general unhappiness of the days events so far, left her less the impressed.
The rooms themselves although big and clean and with nice bathrooms, weren't that impressive. The rest of the casino was beautiful and looked very classy and expensive but that feeling wasn't carried through to these rooms. The casino does have 8 different classes of rooms and we were in the cheapest so I'm sure there were some impressive rooms in the place somewhere.
All we wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep, but we had tickets to the Cirqie Du Soleil Beatles show, Love, which was at the Mirage Hotel. Our plane landed at 3:30 and with the close proximity of the airport we figured we would be checked in by 4:40, 5 at worse. It was now 6:15 and we had to pick up our tickets by 7 for the 7:30 show. We seriously considered skipping the show, but the tickets weren't cheap and being tightasses we decided we better front.
Due to how late it was and the fact we had no energy, we caught a cab to the venue instead of walking the mile or so it would have taken. Getting the tickets wasn't a problem and left us with about 30 mins to get something to eat. We decided to try a world famous Vegas buffet.
It cost us about $20 each and it was awesome. They had the whole thing broken down into different regional types, with each regional type having a different station.
So there was a Mexican station, and a chinese station, a sushi station, a southern (usa) station, an Italian station, a seafood station etc. All up there were about 17 stations (including dessert) and it served a massive array of different fresh and yummy foods and was well worth the money, even if we didn't eat all that much.
We then headed to the show. None of us had ever seen a Cirque show so we didn't quite know what to expect, but it was awesome. From the moment you walked in, the ushers were dressed either like the guards from Buckingham Towers (guys) or like traditonal english police from the 60's (girls) and it looked striking. The theatre only held a few hundred people and it was in a circle. We had 2nd row tickets but there isn't a bad seat in the place. As soon as it was started we were awake again and full of energy. The costuming and acrobotics were amazing. The show was heavilly developed by George Harrison before his death and had the blessing and input of the surviving beatles as well as Yuko. They play about 20 beatles songs and with each one they sort of tell a story either about the beatles or of the 60-70s britian. It's a hard show to explain in words (Without it going on forever and as you would have noticed from reading this blog, I tend to ramble at the best of times anyway) but the storyline hangs together well and there are no pauses during the show. The whole stage can lift up and down, so between segments only a part of the stage may be up while the rest is down having the next scence put on it, which will then rise. Theres all sorts of trapeze and other areo-batics (is that a word, it should be. In my defense its 4am at the moment and I can't sleep) happening above you. The only (very small) problem with the show is that there is too much happening, and you can only look at one thing at a time which means you are missing out on all this other amazing stuff happening around you. The show is also cut with projections of the 4 members of the beatles being projected onto curtains with them acting to audio of out-takes from studio sessions from the 60's. These were really cool to listen to, with them being themselves and goofing around and you get a sense of how close and how good friends they all were.
It was a great show and we would have kicked ourselves if we had missed it. We left the show feeling better and more awake, so we decided to walk from there back to our hotel. We walked past Ceasors Palace and then through the Bellagio. We stopped to watch the famous Dancing Fountains show out the front of Bellagio which happens every 1/2 hour but it wasn't on tonight due to high winds. D'oh.
We walked passed Le Paris which has a replica of the Effiel Tower and other famous French landmarks and it looked stunning. We made it back to our hotel and after a quick look at the casino area itself we headed to bed after what was a very long and tiring day. It was about midnight at this stage, which considering it was 3am in New York due to the difference in time-zone, was a mighty effort on our part.